Flannel Friday: Hippos in Hats

The highlight of my summer programs this year was my Read-Along Story Time for Beginning Readers. Though this story time had been happening since January, I really feel like I hit my stride with it in July and August, and I especially enjoyed creating literacy games for the kids to play. To my great disappointment, nobody came to the last session of the season, so I wound up with one game that I didn't get to use. It's called Hippos in Hats, and it explores consonant digraphs containing the letter H. (I had planned a letter H-themed story time, which is where the inspiration came from.)

To play, you need two sets of pieces: hippos labeled with words containing the letter combinations sh, th, ch, ph, and wh and hats labeled with those same letter combinations. The object is to match each hippo to the correct hat based on which digraph the word contains. I color-coded the hats to make it a little bit easier to tell the digraphs apart, but the hippos all look the same.

Here is a hippo labeled with the word "when," who gets a "wh" hat.

This hippo's face reads "phone" so he gets a green "ph" hat.

 

This hippo's word is "chat", so she's wearing a red "ch" hat. 

If I were sharing this at story time, I'd have the piles of hats set out where the kids could see them and I'd show the kids one hippo at a time. Depending on the size of the group, I might let the kids choose a hippo from a basket or bag to get them more engaged. If I trusted the pieces not to disappear, I'd also love to set this up as a station for kids to play with on their own outside of a formal story time setting. Though this version of the game is designed for beginning readers up to age 8, it would be easy to simplify for a preschool audience. Instead of matching words to the digraphs they could contain, kids could match words to their first letter, or even uppercase letters to their lowercase counterparts. 

I am this week's Flannel Friday host! You can leave your links here, and they will be included in the final round-up, to be posted no later than Saturday afternoon. For more information on how to participate in Flannel Friday, visit the official website.

Flannel Friday Round-Up, 9/6/13

Welcome to your Flannel Friday Round-Up for September 6, 2013!

First off, I'd like to welcome a Flannel Friday first-timer into the fold! Christine at Felt Board Ideas shares her flannel board adaptation of 10 Little Rubber Ducks by Eric Carle. Thanks for joining the fun, Christine!

If you're planning a story time about apples in the next few weeks, then Lisa, Kathryn, and Kristie have you covered with a variety of fun activities. Lisa at Libraryland shares her version of Way Up High in the Apple Tree, where the pieces stick to a handy glove, and as a bonus, she shows off an adorable apple-themed craft with an accompanying rhyme about a wiggly worm. At Fun with Friends at Story Time, Kathryn presents several apple activities, including an apple-themed version of BINGO, an original rhyme for counting by twos, and an apple tree hand puppet. Inspired by Anna at Future Librarian Superhero, Kristie of Let the Wild Rumpus Start shares her version of Five Apples in a Basket.

Bridget at What is Bridget Reading? is also counting to five, but with those silly monkeys who always tease Mr Alligator.  She also shares a monkey fingerplay she recently found through Perry Public Library. 

At SLC Book Boy, sdbahlmann presents Nick Sharratt's Shark in the Park, which he cut out of cardstock and presented on an overhead projector.

Mollie of What Happens in Story Time... made an adorable flannel set for a rhyme called Pea Soup, which I found a long time ago and then never used.

Tara of Storytime with Miss Tara and Friends introduces us to a puppet version of Crispin, the dragon from Not Your Typical Dragon by Dan Bar-el, and shares the rest of her dragon-themed story time as well. 

As other Flannel Friday participants have done, Lisa from Thrive After Three shows off her story time space this week, and explains how she sets it up for each of her groups.

Cate from Storytiming sings the praises of Sarah Silverman's interactive, video-based app, Uncle Sarah, and shares how she has used it in story time. 

At Piper Loves the Library, Jane shares how she used sheep to cure a meltdown in the doctor's office waiting room and then shows off her flannel sheep, including one who is sheared! 

Lastly, I'm Katie, and my post here at Story Time Secrets is a literacy game designed for beginning reader story time called Hippos in Hats, which explores consonant digraphs containing the letter H.

Next week, Flannel Friday will be hosted by Bridget. Don't forget - you can also follow Flannel Friday on Pinterest and Facebook, as well as at the official website. Have a great weekend!